Opening Act (40 page)

He sighed, and it was the kind of sigh a biblical patriarch might issue over his errant children continuing to worship false idols. “For God's sake, Loni.”

“For God's sake, what?” She looked toward the door, her avenue of escape. She should leave right now. She was already running late. Save this argument for later.

But she stood fast, rooted by something…a sudden flickering of angry rebellion.

He gestured toward her clothes. “Look at you. This is…I mean, I just don't understand what the attraction is to this cheap, noisy cesspit of a world you continually find yourself drawn back to.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “What cesspit is that, exactly?”

“You know exactly what I'm talking about,” he said, shifting his weight from foot to foot, like a boxer getting ready to jab. “The one your little vulgarian friend Zee inhabits. All that binge-drinking and crashing music and mindless, casual sex.”

“Except for the crashing music, you've exactly described faculty life here.”

He extended his jaw and breathed audibly. “And this,” he said, snubbing his nose at her. “This air of superiority you put on whenever you get anywhere near the common herd. Like associating with them ennobles you or something.”

“The…the ‘common herd,' ” she repeated, unable to believe he'd actually just said that.

“Not to mention the rank ingratitude it implies. I mean, for Christ's sake,” and here he started pacing, growing more agitated with every step, “I
rescued
you from all of that! I
saved
you from a life in that stockyard world of human cattle and subhuman swine! I brought you here, to this place where your intellect and your sensibilities are appreciated, hell,
honored
, and where you can live the life you were meant to live—the life of the mind, pursuing inquiry and delving into the eternal mysteries. And here you are, in this…this world of
privilege
, and you seem to grasp at every opportunity to hurl yourself back into the gutter. Even embarrassing yourself by insisting on publishing your own tepid work and then
reading
it in public. Putting yourself on
display
for the derision of those cretins. What the hell were you thinking? Are you so
eager
to debase yourself?”

She bristled at this reference to
Venus in Retrograde
, the first he'd dared to make since the bookstore. “The online reader reviews have been good,” she protested.

He barked a laugh. “Who do you think has been
writing
those reviews?”

Her jaw dropped. “No.”

“Yes.
Somebody
had to salvage some scrap of dignity from that fiasco, even if it's only the
appearance
of dignity. Of course I did it. Like I said, I've
saved
you, and I
keep on
saving you. Every goddamn day. Hell, I even save you from
yourself
.”

She stared at him, mouth open, for a very long time. The entire world seemed to have gone very, very still. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears—her angry, stuttering heartbeat—but everything else was calm, like in an orchestra waiting for a cymbal to crash.

“If I'd known that's how you felt,” she said, “I never would have come here with you. I never would have allowed you to have such influence and control over me.” She shook her head. “You know my
love for the Romantic poets, the ones who wandered the world finding the source of their art in all the things you look down your nose at: the lives of common people, their rituals and their communities, their songs and their sweat. Yet you think
removing
me from that world is doing me a
favor
. Taking me to this little insular enclave of fetishism and navel-gazing. I—I'm just completely astonished by your arrogance.”

“Well, I'm completely astonished by your ignorance.”

She headed for the door. “We can talk about this later. I have some subhuman swine to commune with.”

“Oh, no, you don't,” he said, grabbing her arm. “You don't walk out on
me
like that! Not with everything you owe me.”

“I owe you respect, and gratitude, and that's
it
,” she said, jerking her arm away. “And don't ever lay a hand on me that way again.”

“You can't play
that
card,” he said with a shockingly callous laugh. “Not after all the times you've spread-eagled for me in bed, like a goddamn bitch in heat—”

He made a move to grab her again. She batted away his hand, and he immediately lunged in with his other one. She backed away to dodge it and in the process lost her balance. She fell and hit her forehead on the metal edge of the coat rack.

“Oh, my God,” he cried, “oh, God,
Loni!
Oh, my God, I'm so sorry! Loni! Loni!”

She sat up and gingerly felt her forehead, her fingers coming away bathed in blood.

“Oh, my God!” With fumbling hands, he unzipped his suitcase and pulled out a white T-shirt, then bundled it up and applied it to Loni's wound. “Oh, Jesus! Oh, sweet fucking Christ! I'm so sorry!”

“How bad is it?” she said, feeling quite amazingly calm.

“It's soaking right through,” he said. “Head wounds, they bleed like crazy. Oh, Loni, sweetheart, I'm so fucking insanely sorry…”

“Help me up,” she commanded him.

And he did. She gave him her left hand, while continuing to hold the T-shirt to her forehead with her right.

“Please, please,” he said, “say you'll forgive me. Oh, my God. I can't believe this is happening. Sweetheart, baby, I'm so incredibly, overwhelmingly sorry…”

“Byron,” she said.

“…You know how I get when I'm angry. I know that's no excuse, but, honey, you mean
everything
to me…”

“Byron!” she said, more pointedly.

“…You won't tell anyone about this, will you? We can keep this to ourselves. This would just be a goddamn feeding frenzy, and not just in our department. Honey, I'm sorry, I'm such a
shit
, I admit it. Please forgive me, everything will change, I
promise
…”

“Byron!”

He gulped down the rest of his rampaging apology. “What? What, sweetheart? Anything you say. I mean it.
Anything
.”

She looked into his eyes in a way that made him visibly shudder.

Then she said, “Take me to a hospital.”

CHAPTER 24

Three encores, baby.
Three.

They'd been prepared for two, though they thought that was wildly optimistic. For the third, they'd had to improvise. Shay called the Decemberists' “The Rake's Song,” which they'd only ever played before in rehearsal as a warm-up, and which had a ton of lyrics that Shay ended up only imperfectly remembering. But it hadn't seemed to matter. The crowd had been really,
really
into them.

Possibly because everyone had seemed to ramp up their energy level tonight, starting with Trina. Maybe she took Halbert Hasque's parting shot to her as a challenge, but in fact, she focused less on her usual onstage grandstanding and instead poured all of her showmanship into her playing. Her performance was flat-out
blistering
.

So much so that Baby had been taken by surprise and upped his game. Then Jimmy, not wanting to be the only one holding back, had really thrown down some epic keyboard solos. As for Lockwood…well, his lady was in the audience, so
of course
he was going to go all-out.

Meaning that Shay had suddenly found himself surrounded by bandmates who were all in very real contention for the spotlight he himself usually held. He'd had to ratchet up his own performance accordingly, just to hold his own. In fact, he found himself actually grateful Pernita had sent him out wearing only Lockwood's vest, which had elicited some whoops of approval when the lights had come up. He even doffed it for the final two encores and sang entirely naked from the waist up, feeling like a shameless attention whore, but he was clinging on to his front man status by his fingernails here. Whatever it took, he'd do it, and worry about personal dignity later.

He retrieved the vest after the last encore and mopped his brow with it as the crowd—a very respectable size, as Halbert had said—stomped and wailed for more. This had been a freaking
great
night for Overlords.

Backstage, Shay handed the vest back to Lockwood. “Thanks for the loan, man,” he said.

Lockwood looked at it with distaste. “Yeah, well, maybe you could have it dry-cleaned first. Or better yet, just throw it on the burn pile.”

They both laughed—they'd laugh at anything right then. They were on top of the world.

“You see Zee out there?” Shay asked as they climbed the stairs back to the greenroom.

Lockwood shook his head. “I'm a professional, Dayton. I was
in the zone
, not checkin' out the room for any goddamn tail.”

Shay laughed again. “You're full of shit, man.”

Lockwood shrugged. “Yeah, all right. Sure I saw her. Watched her watching me, the whole goddamn time.”

In the greenroom, Halbert had champagne flowing (still not his own preferred label, Shay noted), but Shay himself preferred to crack open a bottle of the bourbon Paul Di Santangelo had sent. He took his first few sips as he donned the shirt he'd worn from the hotel and simultaneously felt both the warmth of the liquor and the comfort of once again being dressed like a post–Stone Age human being.

Fans and press started filing in, and both Halbert and Pernita, visibly uncomfortable at milling about with common people, left the room. Overlords of Loneliness spent a dizzying half hour or so
holding court, though during the process their members, one by one, slipped away to go back to the stage and break down their equipment. No one entirely trusted the house crew, especially Lockwood with his precious drums. He was the first to go.

Which was a shame, because Zee showed up a few minutes later. If she'd been a little quicker, she might have met him on the stairs. As it was, Shay caught her scanning the room for him and being perplexed at not finding him. He couldn't tell her where he'd gone just yet; he was still busy talking to his public.

His
public. This—this here—was what he'd been aiming for, ever since he first took up a mic in his parents' garage, back in his senior year, along with a few like-minded friends—Lockwood one of them. And now he'd arrived. A headliner with his own band in the biggest city in America, at the end of a national tour, and sitting with a towel around his neck, drinking premium bourbon, and pontificating for the eager ears of rapt listeners.

“Yeah, sure, I have a vision for Overlords,” he said in answer to some mundane question. “What I'd like is to bring back some of the wild, expressionistic elements to rock-and-roll, the way the great early bands borrowed from the Romantic poets…like, y'know, Blake and…well, Blake and whoever.” Dang, that thought had petered out a bit. He'd realized it was going to when he was halfway into it. The only reason he'd even gone down that road was that the visitors to the greenroom had thinned out enough now that he thought Zee might possibly overhear him and report back to Loni that he'd been talking about William Blake. And then, after the last few fans had gone—one final girl actually lifting her shirt and having him unstrap her bra so that he could sign his name over the whole of her back—Shay was alone…with Zee.

It was momentarily awkward. He of course hadn't forgotten that Zee had no reason to think him anything but a selfish, manipulative shit. But the whole night had been such a joyride, and she was apparently so happy with Lockwood these days, that he set his apprehension aside and gave her a great big grin. “Hey there, Zee Gleason.”

“Hi, Shay Dayton! Great concert. I mean, best I've ever seen you give. By a long shot.”

“Yeah, well, we've really tightened up in all our time on the road.”

“Jesus! You sure have.” She looked momentarily awkward, then said, “I…I was hoping to have a friend with me tonight. I have no idea what happened to her.”

“Never mind. It's enough that you're here. Lockwood's over the moon about it.” He jerked his thumb toward the stairs. “You just missed him. He went down to help load out. No one's allowed to break down his kit but him.”

“I know. The way he treats that setup, I get jealous sometimes.”

Shay shook his head. “No need for that. If you could only hear the way he talks about you!”

She perked up but tried not to show it. “Oh, shut up.”

“No, he really does.” He took another sip of bourbon, then lifted the glass to her and said, “Pour you one?”

“Nnnno,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Bit strong for me. I'll just go down and see if I can find Lockwood.”

“We've got champagne, too,” he said, pulling the bottle from the bucket. “Looks like there's a mouthful left. Wet your whistle?”

She took a moment to consider this, then said, “What the hell. It's a night worth celebrating, right?”

“You slam-dunked that one,” he said, and he emptied the bottle into a plastic cup and passed it to her. “Cheers,” he said, raising his own drink, and they tossed back a mouthful together.